T3 Player Review

There's no shortage of iPhone and iPod touch music players in the App Store. They all basically do the same thing, but each one presents your tunes in a unique way, using clever interfaces and bold fonts to make your music look as good as it sounds. Many of them subscribe to Dieter Rams' principles of good design, but as far as we can tell, only one pays direct homage to his timeless vision.

To say T3 Player is inspired by Rams' Braun radio is like saying the iPhone 4S is inspired by the iPhone 4. Needless to say, there's quite a bit of skeuomorphism in its delightful interface. We're not so sure Rams would approve of the ornamental speaker grille that takes up two-thirds of the screen, but T3 is still one of the nicest music players we've ever used. It's a bit like Weather Dial; most of the hard work initially went into its gorgeous design, and the features will probably come with future updates.

Unlike its peers that automatically sync with your music library, T3 utilizes a playlist-type system, in which songs are manually "added" to a queue. The controls are smooth and almost iPod-like as the dial spins from play to pause to skip. A small window tells you what's playing, and while there is no visible scrubber bar, running your finger across the song title will fast-forward or rewind with remarkable precision.

As much as we loved T3's interface, however, we found it to be a classic case of form over function. While the playlist method helps keep the everything clean and sparse on the main screen, it can get tedious, especially when it reverts to the first song every time playback is stopped. Even though it supports background listening and Airplay (via Apple's app switcher), T3 doesn't play nice with iTunes Match, so we had to download a bunch of songs first – some of which refused to play for some reason.

The bottom line. T3 Player's interface sings, but it falls flat as a fully-featured music player.